The advantages of perpendicular writing

Monday, 30 November 2009 00:00

November 30, 1893. Before computers and even before typewriters were widely used, legibility of handwriting was an important matter for business. John K. McInnis, a former school teacher and editor of the Regina Standard agrees with an article by Joseph Witherbee in Popular Science that "perpendicular writing" is much easier to read than traditionally-taught "slanted writing."

Witherbee writes, "The average boy of 13 or 14 years does not write legibly… his laboured copybook hand, with its pale and sight-destroying hair lines, is not at all adapted for business purposes." Perpendicular or vertical writing is said to be "easier to teach," "easier to read," "more rapid," and "from a hygienic [i.e., health] point of view" is "incomparably superior to slanting writing." England, Germany and Austria have already introduced the new writing style.

Vertical writing is more rapid because "the perpendicular of every right-angled triangle is shorter than the hypotenuse, and therefore there is less distance for the pen to travel in making vertical lines than in making slanted lines."

McInnis must speak from a teacher's experience when he concurs with Witherbee that "The first attempts of a new pupil with pen or pencil are nearly perpendicular, and that it is only by keeping constantly at him that the child manages to make his letters at the required slant of fifty-two degrees."

Slanted writing is also blamed for near-sightedness and curved spines. "The tendency in writing slantingly," says McInnis, is "to bend the body to one side, a position that is unhygienic, and certainly, too, slanting writing is more trying to the eyes than vertical writing."

He continues:

"What justification is there for illegibility? Why should anyone inflict a blindly written letter or document upon another person?... A person may not be able to write elegantly, but he can write plainly, if he will only take pains to do so."

"The typewriter cannot supersede the pen for all purposes; and since the pen is to continue to be used, let the rising generation be taught how to use it most naturally and serviceably."